Here are our product releases for Week 2 of 2026, which includes January 5-9, 2026. Please note that there were no platform updates released in the first week of 2026 (January 1-2).
Core HR
Display Notice Periods in Employment Details
Description: As a follow-up to the recent notice period uplift, we’ve extended support to employment contracts by making notice period values available as pre-populated contract variables.
This ensures that notice period information captured in employment details can now be automatically inserted into contract templates, reducing manual effort and improving consistency between employee records and generated contracts. Note that this will only be available on the new document editor.
Release schedule: 24/12/2025
Add Company Policies module to the HeroForce Portal
Objective: Enhance HeroForce team efficiency
Description: Previously, our Global Teams (GT) team had to manage each GT organisation’s policies within each individual organisation. This release centralises the control of policies for all GT organisations to the HeroForce Portal. We now also provide visibility of GT policies to Host organisations, so they are aware of HeroForce employee compliance status.
Key Features
- HeroForce Portal:
- Added Company Policies module to the HeroForce Portal
- Each policy can be assigned to multiple organisations at once, with the same level of employee team/entity/location/etc granularity as before
- Templates are taken from custom templates within GT organisations at the moment - in the future, this can be switched over when template management is introduced to the HeroForce portal. Regardless, the current GT use case for policies is only file upload rather than template-based.
- Template variables are applied uniquely for each assigned organisation to avoid exposing client data
- Aside from sharing logic, all other behaviours are the same as existing organisation policy flows.
- Host organisation: GT policies can now be viewed in their policy management module and GT employee files, with an “Assigned by Global Teams” tag. They cannot edit these policies, but can view their contents. In the employee file, they can view the policy status and details.
- GT Employee: GT employees will now see an “Assigned by Global Teams” tag in their E/F policies tab and policies module
Release Date: 7/1/2026
Turnover Report Enhancements
Description: The Turnover Report now includes a table view of data that can be exported via CSV, making it easier to access, analyse, and share. Additional improvements include updated filters and greater flexibility when generating reports.
Key Updates:
- Timeframe filter updated to Date Range: Offers greater flexibility to customise the data displayed in the report
- New filters added:
- Primary Manager
- Personnel Type
- Tenure Duration
- Table report added: Displays the termination data used in the column chart, showing the individual personnel that make up the chart, including: Personnel Name, Groups, Location, Job Title, Employment Type, Start Date, Termination Date, and Duration
- CSV export added: Can download the table report for further analysis
Release Schedule: 09/01/2026
Target Users: All regions
Data and AI
Recruitment Agent - Employer flow - AI Evaluationb
Description: We’ve enhanced the AI Evaluation for completed video interviews in the Recruitment Agent. The updated experience provides employers with clearer, more transparent insights into candidate responses and allows them to give feedback on the AI-generated scoring.
What’s included in this release:
- Structured, evidence-based evaluation: Candidate responses are assessed using clearly separated
- Strengths and Considerations, each directly referencing evidence from the candidate’s answer to support decision-making.
- Clearer score context: AI-generated scores are displayed prominently alongside the evaluation.
- Employer feedback on scores: Employers can let us know if the AI score feels accurate. This helps us assess how well our agent is scoring candidates and improve its performance over time.
Release Date: 23/12/2025
Target Users: Recruitment teams on Employment Unlimited subplans
HR Rostering and Timesheets
Public Holiday Icon Displaying Work Site and Positions Rosters
A public holiday icon will display on the work site and positions rosters to increase awareness and help rostering managers better schedule their rosters.
Why It Matters: Public holidays can be a stressful time for rostering managers as employee availability might reduce due to people take leave. Additionally, employees are entitled to penalty rates for working on public holidays, which can impact their roster budgets. The public holiday icon will help roster managers have proactive conversations with their employees to avoid understaffing or increased operational expenditure.
Key features:
- A new umbrella icon will appear on the roster for impacted dates - assuming that the public holiday is linked with the work site
- The ability to link an existing public holiday with a work site via the public holiday settings
- Public holidays will be inferred based on the work site's address
- Public holidays can be copied from existing work sites
Target Users: All orgs using work sites and position rostering
Public Release: 31st December, 2025
ITOps and Security
Additional Settings for Payroll Partner Account Recovery Flow
Description: We've rolled out the following updates to give partners more control over how Account Recovery Requests are managed within their business. Partners can now designate a specific user to receive email notifications for all submitted account recovery requests, instead of the default "all partner users." This is set either at the Brand or Partner level, depending on their current payroll champion setup. Account recovery requests, which default to being actioned at the partner level, can now be made actionable by brand-level users.
Release Date: 6 January 2026
Target Users: Payroll Partner and Brand Users
Leave and Expenses
Ensure Compliance with Leave Requests
Objective: Prevent employees from being able to delete a leave request that has been approved or previously approved.
Description: Admins/Owners/Managers can be certain that employees will be unable to delete any leave request that has been approved or previously approved they have already taken. Previously, employees were able to submit a leave request, have this approved, take the leave and then cancel the leave request before it gets processed in payroll. This posed a risk that employees were able to get back a leave balance for leave they have already taken and only relying on a payroll admin email to prevent this. We have now prevented this within platform and only admins/owners/managers/security group users (with access to leave management) will be able to delete a leave request after it has been approved (or previously approved).
Release Schedule: 8th Jan 2025 (Public Release)
Target Users: Global (All regions)
Payroll (Malaysia)
Update and Align the Payroll Platform’s Tax Relief Functionality with Malaysia Budget 2026 Requirements
Description: This project implemented regulatory updates to MY tax reliefs for Basis Period 2026, covering both UI and payrun processing. Key enhancements include:
- Updating tax relief types, descriptions, eligibility rules, and thresholds in accordance with Budget 2026 announcements.
- Introducing new and expanded tax relief categories such as:
- Expanded vaccination coverage approved by MOH
- Increased intervention expenditure limits for learning disabilities
- Extended child care fee eligibility (age limit increased to 12 years)
- Expanded life insurance and education/medical insurance coverage to eligible children
- Enhanced environmental sustainability and home safety expenses
- Ensuring the updated tax reliefs are consistently reflected across:
- Employee Tax Relief page
- Pay Run Inclusion (manual tax relief entry)
- Opening Balance for Basis Period 2026
- Tax relief import and export (data extract)
The solution ensures that when admins select Basis Period 2026, only applicable and updated tax relief options are displayed and processed correctly.
Release Date: 7 January 2026
Target Users: Payroll Admin
Performance Management
Recruitment – Email Notification Improvements
Objective: To reduce notification noise and provide HR Admins and hiring teams with clearer, more controllable recruitment email notifications, while ensuring important candidate activity is still surfaced in a timely way.
Impact: Previously, individual emails were sent for each candidate application and for every hiring stage movement, often resulting in multiple notifications being delivered on the same day. This contributed to inbox fatigue and reduced engagement with recruitment communications. HR Admins also lacked visibility into email content. With this update, we’ve improved the recruitment notification experience by:
- Consolidating pending candidate application emails into a single daily summary, reducing redundant sends when multiple candidates apply on the same day
- Consolidating hiring stage movement emails into a single daily summary, reducing noise when candidates are moved through stages multiple times in a day
- Enabling Candidate Application Report emails by default, with Pending candidate application emails OFF
- Introducing a template preview, allowing admins to view a live sample of the email with placeholder data before it’s sent
These changes reduce email noise while improving transparency and confidence in recruitment communications.
Release Schedule: 05/01/2026
Target Users: Global, Admins and Owners, Standard, Premium, all EOS subs
Email Notifications: Consistency for Existing Toggles
Objective: Improve consistency and transparency in Organisation Emails by adding previews for existing notifications
Description: Email previews are now available for several existing notifications in the Organisation Emails settings page, bringing them in line with newer emails. HR Admins can view a read-only preview of each email, showing the subject line and full email content. The following emails now support previews:
- Onboarding
- {Employee} has completed their onboarding setup
- Don’t delay your pay and complete your onboarding process
- Offboarding
- Employee offboarding reminder!
- Reminder to create a backfill role for an offboarding employee
- Work eligibility
- Employee visa expiry reminder!
- Employee passport expiry reminder!
- Payslips
- Your pay slip for pay period ending {Date} is now available
Release date: 7/1/26
Target users: Global
Emails Notifications: Timesheets
Objective: Give HR Admins greater transparency and control over Employment Hero’s email notifications
Timesheets-related emails are now surfaced in the Organisation Emails settings page (Time > Timesheets), giving HR Admins visibility into what the email is for, when each notification is sent and the ability to toggle delivery on or off at an organisation level. Email previews are now supported for all timesheet-related toggles, allowing Admins to review email subjects and content before managing delivery.
Release Schedule: Jan 9, 2026
Target Users: Global
Support Learning via the Mobile App
Objective: Employees can now access and complete their assigned learning directly from the Employment Hero Work mobile app. This feature is coming with the latest Employment Hero Work app (version 2.70.1) and will be available to all users as the update rolls out.
- A new Learning menu item is available in the app
- Employees can view all assigned learning, including status and due dates
- Courses open securely in-app via Go1, with no additional login required
- Learning progress and completion sync across web and mobile
Release Schedule: Jan 9, 2026
Target Users: Global
Email Notifications: Company Feed & Milestone Reminders
Objective: Reduce email noise while improving transparency and control over notifications
Description: Company Feed email notifications are now both supported in Organisation Emails.
- “New post from {organisation}” and “New announcement from {organisation}” can be toggled on/off individually at an organisation-level.
- "New post from {organisation}" is now → "You have new posts on your Company Feed"
- Announcement emails continue to be sent immediately when an announcement is published.
- The “You have new posts on your Company Feed” email is now delivered as a daily summary instead of an email for every new Company Feed post.
- The summary provides a snapshot of the previous day’s Company Feed activity, including post counts and a highlights section.
- Individual user preferences in My Notifications > Company Feed > General Posts continue to be respected.
- Milestone reminder emails (Birthdays, Work Anniversaries and Probation Periods) are now sent as daily summaries, reducing email volume while continuing to respect existing reminder timing configurations such as on the day or X days before.
- Milestone summaries are generated and delivered based on the recipient’s local timezone, ensuring reminders are sent at an appropriate time for each recipient.
- Emails now use explicit dates instead of relative phrasing (e.g. "in 2 days") to improve clarity across timezones.
- Email previews are available for Company Feed and milestone reminders, allowing Admins to review email content before managing delivery.
Release date: 9/1/26
Target users: Global
Rostering and Timesheets
Sales Import via CSV and Sales Data Visualisation
As teams grow, sales quickly become one of the clearest signals of staffing demand. Relying only on static budgets can lead to over- or under-staffing. Sales-driven rostering is optional, and teams with simpler needs can continue using budget-based rostering.
What’s New: Rostering Management now supports Sales Import via CSV and Sales Data Visualisation. You can upload your sales data directly into the platform and view it, giving you clearer insight into your schedules, timesheets, and budget info.
Why It Matters: Previously, rostering decisions were made without visibility into sales data, despite sales being a key driver of how many people you need on shift. With sales data now available in Rostering Management, you can make more informed, commercially-driven rostering decisions
Target Users: All orgs on work sites and position rostering to all regions
Public Release Date: 09/01/2026
Talent Marketplace
Job Application Abandonment Notifications
Description: To address a 30% drop-off rate during the application process, we have implemented an automated re-engagement system to recover lost conversions and improve funnel efficiency.
Key Changes:
- Integrated an automated email trigger for abandoned application flows.
- Included a direct "Finish my application" link for users to resume.
- Established logic to ensure emails are only sent after a defined period of inactivity post-initiation.
Release Date: 08/01/2026
Target Users: Job seekers